Do you remember how much the Lisa cost? My point is that "no other than Steve Jobs REALLY saw the potential (especially for the home users) of the graphic interface" is nonsense. Xerox created the first GUI on a PC then Microsoft and Apple imitated it at about the same time. Everyone could see the potential but it was a very competitive and expensive industry. Microsoft and Apple came out on top. Steve Jobs was an excellent marketeer and business man, as well as having an eye for spotting and exploiting talent/ opportunities. Themz the facts. Try to pick an argument all you want. I'm moving on.

I have a close relative who works in the transplant department of a big research hospital.

As far as I know, you can't buy your way to the top of the list.  If that were possible, there would essentially be no list.  Skepticism is understandable, but ethical standards are actually very high in this field.

What a very wealthy person might be able to do, however, is get on the list in any state of his choosing.   

The transplant waiting lists contain many people who got sick because of their own foolishness, and may eveven end up dying anyway and wasting the transplanted organ by not following their doctor's orders afterwards.  They are poor risks and end up costing us all a lot of money.  Jobs on the other hand was a perfect candidate and also one with great value to society. 

when it was clear that the PC would win the game with its open architecture and its Fortran compiler and its development tools.

What has that to do with the "home user" I'm trying to point out?

I have some cheap 8GB Chinese unbranded crap now  that has twice the memory as an iPod at half the price and doesn't need the bulky iTunes to just copy MP3's on it.

Oh, and you had that BEFORE there was an iPod?

Quote from: Perry on October 06, 2011, 07:14

"When Reagan was president we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. In Obama's America, no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs."

A witty saying proves nothing.

I'm not trying to prove anything, It WAS just a witty saying that I read somewhere this morning.

I don't want to continue this argument, I like Apple products and you don't. You say Apple products are crap, still they seem to evoke the feelings of the consumers, feel totally new and sell in millions. Maybe they are crap, but I like them (maybe not all, but many)

I have a close relative who works in the transplant department of a big research hospital.

As far as I know, you can't buy your way to the top of the list.  If that were possible, there would essentially be no list.  Skepticism is understandable, but ethical standards are actually very high in this field.

What a very wealthy person might be able to do, however, is get on the list in any state of his choosing.   

The transplant waiting lists contain many people who got sick because of their own foolishness, and may eveven end up dying anyway and wasting the transplanted organ by not following their doctor's orders afterwards.  They are poor risks and end up costing us all a lot of money.  Jobs on the other hand was a perfect candidate and also one with great value to society. 

He might have had a live donor, I'm not sure what the rules are in the U.S.  You still have to be almost dead in the first place in Canada to have the live donor surgery.  IT's amazing that a piece of liver will grow to normal size in both parties.   Last night one news story (I cannot remember where though but I was skeptical about it so it was likely the web) said liver AND pancreas transplant which would have to be a deceased donor.  

I was hospitalized because of my pancreas.  The pain is undescribable, as close to a 10 as I ever want to go (and I've had babies!).  Simple things like lifting your arm to scratch your nose can make you cry in pain.  Outcomes are very poor for pancreatic cancer patients, not only is it such a vital organ, but anything that can hurt that much has to destroy your will to live.

I used macs for 12 years before switching to the PC mainly for availability of 3D Applications.  Macs have always been overpriced and over-hyped but I believe the legacy of Jobs lies in many of the unintended consequences of pushing the industry forward. I like macs but I rather have my family use them while I build a PC with copied GUI from Apple that runs everything I need at 1/2 the price and with all the software.

1) Jobs, Woz, Warnock made desktop publishing possible with the invention of the Mac.  Windows, Unix and Linux followed much much later.

2) The Apple II created the first computer that actually did something useful and introduced the masses to it.  The Altair was only for Uber geeks and it usually was a non working machine most of the time and it sold less than 5k machines.

3) Pixar:  3D animation had stagnated for a decade in high end workstations. Pixar created a huge boom with their Renderman and use of tech for entertainment. Its labs created many of the ideas and usability paradigms that define 3D design and animation today. They were not alone but by Jobs rescuing Pixar from Lucas Film before it closed its doors, created an avenue for entertainment that is in the billions now with thousands of jobs behind it.

4) Pixar single-handedly with Jobs and Lasseter revived Distey Studios into the fortress it is today. They were going bankrupt.

5) Changed the way we buy and access music in a legal way. iTunes may not have been the first, cheapest or most ideal solution but they pushed the market forward with a clear vision and it is still #1 today by a large margin.  I personally don't like it but the iPod changed everything. You can buy a cheaper player and get MP3s on it but you could always bootleg old cassette tapes from your friends and play them on your Matsushita player in the 80s. The Walkman however changed the way we listen to music the same as the iPod moved the way forward for clones to copy them off.

6) Smartphones were a mess before the iPod now we have Android and others competing but before it was painful at best. It jumped the industry almost a decade forward from lack of innovation and stagnation.

7) iPad is an evolution of the smartphone and the laptop. However no one made it as good or as useful before. Once again Steve jumped to the future with great style, usefulness and taste.

All in all you can say many things about Jobs but he was the spindle that moved technology forward and all others followed like sheep. That is his most important contribution, waking up the tech industry to the possibilities of what was already there by amalgamating technologies from different vendors and creating something deeply unique, useful and powerful.

and so on...  killing the floppy, USB, Flat panel monitor use.....